Woman dies in duplex fire in Normal Heights

Fire causes $200,000 in damage and displaces another family

A fire at a two-story duplex in Normal Heights killed a 76-year-old woman early Sunday, San Diego Fire-Rescue Department officials said.

Police and firefighters responded shortly before 2 a.m. to a report of a blaze at the apartment on 36th Street south of Adams Avenue. When they arrived, flames were shooting from the rear of the building’s second story. Fire crews recovered the woman’s body from the second floor.

The Medical Examiner’s Office has not released her name, and an autopsy has yet to be scheduled.

Next door neighbor Sue Schaffner identified the woman as Jennifer Brennan-Sparks, a cookbook author who spent her younger years chronicling recipes from all over the world.

Brennan-Sparks wrote several books including the “Original Thai Cookbook” and “Curries and Bugles: A Memoir & Cookbook of the British Raj,” which won the 1990 Best Book in Literary Food Writing by the International Association of Culinary Professionals.

Schaffner said she knew Brennan-Sparks for about 20 years. She said when Brennan-Sparks’ husband, Art Sparks, passed away in March, things became more difficult for her neighbor, who had trouble getting up and down the stairs of her two-story home.

The woman is believed to have lived alone in her unit, according to the Medical Examiner’s Office.

The fire caused $200,000 in damage and displaced the other family in the duplex. The Red Cross was initially called to assist those residents, but fire-rescue dispatchers said they made their own arrangements for temporary housing.